David Buss is a professor of psychology at University of Texas, Austin. He is known for his evolutionary psychology research on mate selection with the basis on human sex differences. His profound works on human mating strategies defines and distinct his works in the field of psychology. Born on April 14th, 1953 he acquired his PhD in psychology from University of California, Berkeley.
He is most distinguished for his works and in depth researches in human mating strategies and their relationships, conflicts arising between the sexes, prestige, social reputation, status, emotional jealousy, homicide and most recently the issues related to stalking. David Buss along with K. H. Craik has also analyzed and investigated on how certain traits specifically make up a personality. He proposed the idea of Prototype theory into psychology of personality which says that traits are used as a categorization of a personality which means that how strongly a trait defines a certain personality. David buss differentiated between the short term and long term mating strategies. He used the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI-R) for determining that if the person is in favor of a long term serious relationship or a short term hookup. According to David Buss’s research along with his colleagues he concluded through the experiment that men who showed a woman’s face preferred a long term mating relationship whereas the other category of men who showed woman’s body have an inclination towards keeping a short term mating strategy. The same experiment was conducted with women but they revealed no specific feature to determine their mating strategy for David Buss and his team. According to their researches men and women face different challenges in terms of their role and gender which determines their behavior today. Women face the challenges of pregnancy, bringing up a child effectively enough to ensure his survival giving them the utmost care whereas men face the challenges of providing resources, gene transfers to the off springs and surviving through the uncertainty that becoming a parent brings with it.
David Buss has also devised Strategic Interference Theory (SIT) which states that men and women deal differently with intersexual deception. Women as emotional beings get more distressed over their partner’s involvement with others whereas men get emotionally worked up over their partner’s display of sexual infidelity and lies.
David Buss has the honor of being bestowed with the Distinguished Scientific Award for early career contribution to psychology as well as APA G. Stanley Hall Lectureship along with numerous other awards. He has also penned down numerous books related to his researches. One of his distinguished books, The Murderer Next Door presents an evolutionary perspective of modern theory of homicide. His many other books include The Dangerous Passion and The Evolution of Desire. He has also been involved with cross-cultural researches extensively as well as giving lectures throughout United States. One of his famous books Evolutionary Psychology: The new science of Mind has been published in its fourth edition in 2011.